GZ's Assemblagehttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2
Technology, Education, Accessibility, Autonomy, and LearningSat, 03 Feb 2018 23:31:20 -0800en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Accessibility: Volunteer Driven?http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessibility-volunteer-driven/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessibility-volunteer-driven/#respondFri, 02 Feb 2018 01:57:38 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=202http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessibility-volunteer-driven/feed/0Accessible Live Streaming: 23 Questions to Help You Get Started Thinkinghttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessible-live-streaming-23-questions-to-help-you-get-started-thinking/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessible-live-streaming-23-questions-to-help-you-get-started-thinking/#respondFri, 02 Feb 2018 01:54:19 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=196Recently I have working with accessible live streaming. Live streaming has been around for some years now, but it seems to be exploding much more with platforms like Twitch and multiple tools to enhance live streaming–especially for live gaming.

Before you can really get going with live streaming, there are a number of questions you need to ask–or at least think about.

Here are 23 questions to think about. And this is just getting started.

Where would the conference be held?

How robust is the Internet on site? In country? In continent?

How many attendees do you hope to reach?

Would be be streaming content out? Streaming in?

How central is interaction?

Are CART writers or licensed live captioners available?

Do you have ASL interpreters on staff or will they be hired?

How long are the sessions?

How robust and capable are the technological resources? Do you have video conferencing and digital video streaming, meeting, and production suites, or are you looking at some laptops on spotty WiFi?

Do you plan on recording the sessions? Hosting them on line?

How are you defining accessibility: to address persons with hearing, mobility, and/or vision loss, or providing content to people who have been left out of the loop, or…?

What is your timeline?

What is your chain of command? If consensus driven, are you organized or does it take six weeks to make a decision?

How much content would you like to stream? Several hours or several days?

Do you currently have robust official or volunteer support staff? How technologically comfortable and competent are they?

How familiar with live streaming and/or online conferences are your presenters? Potential attendees?

Are you used to providing or outsourcing tech support for online attendees?

What are your outcomes?

Are there specific conference goals that live streaming should support?

Is your organization moving this direction with a desire to have sustainable, long-term plans, or is this something to check out, see what you think, and then keep or toss depending on results?

How widely spread might attendees be, i.e. around the continent or around the globe?

Have you already selected your presenters?

Must the final project and product be polished, or is your community okay with bumps, errors, and some low fidelity experiences?

]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2018/02/02/accessible-live-streaming-23-questions-to-help-you-get-started-thinking/feed/0Easy YouTube Caption Correctionhttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/29/easy-youtube-caption-correction/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/29/easy-youtube-caption-correction/#respondFri, 29 Jan 2016 05:07:58 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=115Anyone who has used YouTube’s automatic captions knows there are regular and serious flaws–even with the ongoing and regular improvement. One way to correct these is to use YouTube’s built in editing tools. But frankly, still, it’s not that easy to use.

Two other solutions exist–both built by independent captioners.

Michael Lockerey’s NoMoreCraptions is an open source approach to correcting your captions. It’s easy and simple.

Mike Ridgway has built DIYcaptions. Keyboard controls and easy to use interface are great benefits.

Not only can you work on and correct you own captions, you can take someone else’s video, see their bad YouTube captions, edit them to how you’d like to seem them, and …. Export your file as an SRT. So, if you are captioning videos for other people, you don’t have to start from zero; you can build from the rough YouTube transcript and easily edit and revise.

Yes!

]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/29/easy-youtube-caption-correction/feed/0Caption Match (Resource)http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/25/caption-match-resource/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/25/caption-match-resource/#respondMon, 25 Jan 2016 05:57:55 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=103If you need captions but are not sure which provider to use, you can go through CaptionMatch. They work to connect people who need captions with captioning providers of all sorts. Benefit: once a match is made, a small donation goes to support CCAC’s caption advocacy work!
]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/25/caption-match-resource/feed/0Early Version of Caption Studies Conference (Dec 2014)http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/25/early-version-of-caption-studies-conference-dec-2014/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/25/early-version-of-caption-studies-conference-dec-2014/#respondMon, 25 Jan 2016 05:55:34 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=101This is presented & preserved strictly for documentation and historical purposes. This is not the official page or post for the conference. Please be sure to go to the Caption Studies Conference page for the most recent information.

Foreword

Through the end of November and start of December 2015, I have spoken with a number of colleagues–at WOU and beyond–about the possibility of having a conference focused on Caption Studies. Everyone I have spoken to has been enthusiastic, supportive, and engaged. Thus we have moved the planning forward. As of now, early December 2015, things are still very loose and multiple strands are still moving around. If you have ideas, suggestions, or comments, please be in touch.

What follows is a tentative definition of Caption Studies and a description of the purpose, model, and goals.

What is Caption Studies?*

Caption Studies is an emerging field. To my knowledge, the field was first identified by Zdenek (2015) in Reading Sounds as “a research program that is deeply invested in questions of meaning at the interface of sound, writing, and accessibility” (p. 2). Caption Studies inhabits an intersection of disability studies, rhetoric, and communications. There are also clear relationships to and impacts with multimedia studies, Interpreting, second language learning, D/deaf Studies, composition, educational technology, usability, and technical communication. Caption Studies looks at and analyzes how captions are created, presented, and used by diverse audiences (D/deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing) for diverse purposes (entertainment, education, training, language learning, etc.) in diverse situations (on TV, online, in the workplace, in the classroom, etc.). Caption Studies is not limited to academic or corporate research; the field is influenced, shaped, and populated by caption users, caption creators, practitioners, caption advocates, scholars, academics, and researchers.

* This is a tentative and fluid definition that will be adjusted and revised as the field matures. Hopefully the conference(s) will elicit additional variations and definitions.

Timing

Online conference for 2 days in August: Monday, August 1st, and Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016. Face-to-face conference for two days in late July, 2017, at Western Oregon University.

The online conference will take place from noon through 5 pm PST on both days. Registration (free) will be required in order to participate. This will help us better organize and respond in the future as well as give us a sense of the community participation.

Conference’s Purpose

Rather than lament the flood of bad captions or the dearth of quality captions, we want to promote what is health, interesting, strong, and engaging in the captioning community.

establish/initially celebrate Caption Studies as an area of research, advocacy, and practice;

provide a space for practitioners, researchers, and advocates to present and share their work where captioning is the primary, instead of being a secondary, focus;

connect, network, energize, and build momentum for all of us to promote captioning in our diverse fields;

understand, explore, discuss, and advocate for more effective legislation.

Envisioned Constituencies & Participants

Caption users

Students/learners

Language (first and second)

Literacy

Situationally D/deaf/Hard of Hearing (i.e. viewing TV in a noisy pub or working out in a gym)

D/deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing

Caption creators

Amateur, academic, professional

Universal designers

Caption researchers

Academic, industry, independent

Caption advocates

Accessibility and Universal Design practitioners and researchers

Anyone curious about captions

Conference Paths

Academic/research

Practitioners

Advocacy

Possible Topics for Presentations

Captions and copyright

Captioning and disability studies

Experimental captioning

Captioning as creative or interpretive act

Kinetic text in captioning

Rhetorical analysis of captioning

Meaning construction in captioning

Effective captioning advocacy

Panel on/by CART captioners on practice & profession

Teaching with captions

Captioning guidelines

Educating and training new captioners on campus

DIY Captioning Technology/apps–panel

YouTube’s captioning history

Captioning hacks

Voice writing

Building a captions database

Caption research tools

Enculturating new captioners

The joy of indie captions

Captioning irony

Captioning and second language learning

User testing with captions

please send other possible ideas!

Presentation formats

Recording with Twitter Chat

Currently we are working with two presentation formats. The first format is where presenters or panels pre-record their presentations or discussion and then host a live Twitter chat during the conference. This is inspired by the work by AxsChat. This allows the presenter time to caption and/or ASL interpret the videos and provide them to us. All of the conference videos will be posted to a conference website a few days before the online conference starts. This will give viewers a chance to watch one or several of the videos before the conference and thereby enable them to participate more fully in the Twitter chats.

The second format will be a live panel. This panel will take place on a platform that is still being determined since, in some cases, we will have panelists from diverse locations. The live panel will also be CART captioned for viewers.

Most sessions will run about 60 minutes.

There will be 15 minute breaks between sessions.

All times mentioned are PST.

Other possible related events for future consideration

Mini-caption film festival

Extreme caption examples

Captioning workshops

CART, TypeWell, and C-Print demonstrations

Captioning literacy sharing, recording

This page is constantly evolving and developing. If you have ideas or suggestions, please let me know!

CaptionMatch: Works to matchmake people seeking captions with those who provide captions. A small percentage of any match made goes to support the CCAC non-profit.

]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/some-commercial-caption-companies/feed/1Open Stenography: Ploverhttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/open-stenography-plover/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/open-stenography-plover/#respondWed, 06 Jan 2016 21:02:03 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=91Fascinating open source project: Plover, open stenography. Founded and coordinated by Mirabai Knight, a CART professional. Definitely worth looking into if you want to help make stenography more affordable and accessible.
]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/open-stenography-plover/feed/0Future of Accessibility and Video Captions… From 3PlayMediahttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/future-of-accessibility-and-video-captions-from-3playmedia/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/future-of-accessibility-and-video-captions-from-3playmedia/#respondWed, 06 Jan 2016 20:59:36 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=89An interesting and engaging video presentation panel with experts from Google, Dell, T-Mobile and 3PlayMedia. They discuss video accessibility and captions in the embedded video. The article also provides some context and materials.

]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2016/01/06/future-of-accessibility-and-video-captions-from-3playmedia/feed/0Tools for Grabbing Captions: DVD Decrypter, CC Extractor, & SubRiphttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2015/12/17/tools-for-grabbing-captions-dvd-decrypter-cc-extractor-subrip/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2015/12/17/tools-for-grabbing-captions-dvd-decrypter-cc-extractor-subrip/#respondThu, 17 Dec 2015 19:33:12 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=85I’ve not been able to actually do any research with captions and caption files for a while: term has come to a close and all my caption focus has been on reading Zdenek’s book and working on the caption studies conference. Fortunately, I now have time to go look at grabbing some of the files so that I can work with them. I keep on doing searches for guides and tips, so I wanted to share a few things here.

Important note: All the files I’m grabbing are so that I can access the captions. If studios made their caption files public and accessible on the web, then I would not need to rip videos in order to get the content I am researching. As an academic researcher, I am focusing on captions. Since they are not provided on way, I will access them another. My description below is meant to document my experience with and development of a research methods and tools in the field of caption studies.

I have a Mac with plenty of processor (32 GB), so I’m working with a VM since a lot of the caption capture programs are written for PCs. After a couple of hard and problematic starts with my VM and settings, I was finally able to DVD Decrypter and CC Extractor installed. There is a great guide on how to install both programs here at Sourceforge.

Previously I attempted to work with SubRip a number of times, and I followed the instructions which seemed pretty clear at Doom9, but things just did not work very well. I think this is my own failure and not that of the software. My working understanding of IFOs and VOBs is still pretty thin, and there’s some work to do on that. In order to make a lot more progress, I’m definitely going to need to improve that understanding.

In the mean time, though, I have DVDs coming in for the different movies and series I’m researching. I need to grab them while I can so I am not spending hours ripping in the future. To do this, I have been using the free version of DVD Smith. I have also been using Handbrake to grab videos, but Handbrake seems to crash once or twice out of every three efforts–when it’s nearly 99% done. I can’t tell you how frustrating this is.

In the future, I hope to explore other tools like Avidemux. However, I need a deeper understanding of the captions before I move in to working with more complex tools.

]]>http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2015/12/17/tools-for-grabbing-captions-dvd-decrypter-cc-extractor-subrip/feed/0Resource: Working with Simonehttp://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2015/11/26/resource-working-with-simone/
http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/2015/11/26/resource-working-with-simone/#respondThu, 26 Nov 2015 15:59:30 +0000http://www.wou.edu/wp/zobelg2/?p=43There is a brief Lynda.com course on installing and setting up the accessible theme Simone, the theme of this site. You have to have a Lynda.com membership, but the course should be pretty helpful from what I can tell.